Rayman (1995 video game)
Rayman is a platform video game published, produced and developed by Ubisoft and is the first in the Rayman series of games, It was first released for the PlayStation in 1995, the in 1996 for the Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn and the MS-DOS. It has also been ported to such systems as Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network), PC and DSiWare. There was a version for the Sega 32X, yet cancelled due to the systems short lifespan. Plot In Rayman's World, a mystical object known as the Great Protoon maintains the planet's harmony and balance. One fateful day, the evil Mr. Dark steals the Protoon, causing the world to fall out of balance and scattering all the Electoons that gravitated around it across the world, where they are captured by the strange creatures that appear due to the phenomenon. With Betilla the Fairy defeated in her attempt to stop Mr. Dark, it is up to Rayman to free the Electoons and defeat Mr. Dark and his minions. Gamplay Rayman is a side-scrolling platform game in which the player character is the titular Rayman, who must travel through five worlds (Dream Forest, Band Lands, Blue Mountains, Picture City and The Caves of Skops) to free all of the caged Electoons, of which six are located somewhere on each level. Only when all the Electoons are freed will Rayman be able to reach and confront Mr. Dark at his lair in Candy Chateau. Each world has one of Mr. Dark's boss minions which Rayman must also defeat. The player must traverse the levels and reach the end goal, a signpost with an exclamation mark on it. Since all of the game's levels in the game are divided into several parts, the goal post also acts as a transition to the following part of a level. The player is given a certain amount of lives, which are lost when Rayman is hit by an enemy or falls into water or a pit. If all lives are lost at any point, the "Game Over" screen will appear, in which the player can continue or quit playing. Scattered around each level are small, sparkling blue spheres called Tings. If Rayman picks up 100 of them, he gains an extra life and the counter resets to zero. When Rayman dies, he loses all of the Tings he collected. The player will come across a variety of other power-ups and bonuses, such as a golden fist, a faster punching fist, a power to restore Rayman's lost life energy, and flying blue elves that will shrink Rayman down in size to access new areas. Tings can also be used to pay a Magician found on certain levels to enter a bonus stage, in which Rayman can win an extra life if he collects all of the Tings within a certain amount of time. In early stages of the game, Rayman has the ability to walk, crawl, make silly faces and punch enemies. He obtains additional powers during the game (telescopic punching, holding onto ledges, grappling onto flying rings, flying with his hair as helicopter blades, and running) from Betilla the Fairy, while others are given temporarily from his friends that are used for a specific levels only. Development Conception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michel_Ancel.jpgMichel Ancel, the game's lead designer, created the Rayman character in 1994. The Rayman character came from sketches in 1994 made by Michel Ancel under the influence of Russian, Chinese and Celtic fairy tales. Ubisoft decided to support Ancel's project, and funded everything they had into it.[4] The absence of limbs on Rayman was due to various technical limitations encountered. In its early development, Rayman was produced for the Super Nintendo console which featured a two-player mode. Ubisoft decided to move the project to a CD-ROM console, and the developers hired animators from a cartoon company that considerably improved the graphics. When Super Nintendo's CD-ROM feature was canceled however, the game moved to the Atari Jaguar for its superior hardware. The PlayStation version came later in the development, developed by Ancel's team. Character and art design Rayman features detailed cartoonish graphics, smooth animations at 60 (or 50 in PAL regions) frames per second, and the use of up to 65,000 colours. Trivia *Rayman's original name was Jimmy but the idea was dropped. *In Japan Rayman's torso was changed from Purple to Blue since in Japan purple is 'The colour of death'